Week 41 - Ezekiel 9-12, Revelation 12 (Oct. 8-14)

Notes

EZEKIEL 9:4 THE MARK OF THE PURE

You’ve probably heard of the “Mark of the Beast” which comes from this passage in Revelation:

It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads,  (Revelation 13:16)

But had you heard of the mark of the pure? Look What God tells his messenger (the “man clothed in linen”) to do here in Ezekiel 9:4

“Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.”

This mark was for those in Jerusalem who did not practice the idolatry and paganism that Judah had descended into. The word translated “mark” in your Bible is literally the Hebrew letter “taw”. While this passage seems to reflect a spiritual reality and not a physical one, the mark in question was almost certainly the Hebrew letter indicated in the text.

In the script used during Old Testament times it was either in X shape or a + shape. It may represent God’s ownership of the remnant of the people who deserved to survive the coming destruction. Jewish tradition continued to employ this sign as a mark of the righteous as we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls, though the intertestamental period and into rabbinical traditions. This mark’s resemblance to a cross made the symbol unpopular among the rabbis in the post-Christian era. (IVBBBC: OT, 697)

Isn’t it cool to think of the pure in Jerusalem being marked with the cross shape by God to be rescued from his punishment? Early in the history of the Church, there developed a tradition of making the sign of the cross on one’s forehead. The earliest witness to this practice in the Early Church Fathers is that of Tertullian’s, writing “De Corona” in approximately 201 AD

“In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross” 

The origins of this tradition were not explicitly tied to this passage in Ezekiel 9. But by the time the 5th century arrived. Jerome, a great teacher of the Church, and one of the most accomplished masters/students of the Scriptures, had thoroughly connected the tradition with this passage (Ezekiel 9:4), and this is the origin of the tradition of the “sign of the cross” which you witness in Catholic and Orthodox churches today. It is not something that we, as Protestants, need to be scared of or avoid, feel free to think of Christ’s saving work and Ezekiel 9 if you wish to join your Catholic brother or sister in making the sign of the cross.

EZEKIEL 10:1 THE GLORY DEPARTS

I was unfamiliar with the term “Lapis Lazuli” which appears often in Ezekiel when he see’s a vision of God, as here in 10:1. it is a gem stone, and looks like this

I was unfamiliar with the term “Lapis Lazuli” which appears often in Ezekiel when he sees a vision of God, as here in 10:1. it is a gemstone and is pictured here:

Ezekiel, though he was living in Babylon, was taken by God to witness certain conditions and visions of the promised land and Jerusalem. Notice the way that Ezekiel describes his mode of transportation for these visions:

I looked and saw a figure like that of a man…He stretched out what looked like a hand and took me by the hair of my head. The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven and in visions of God he took me to Jerusalem” (Ezekiel 8:2-3)

That does not sound like a very comfortable ride! Ezekiel sees something terrible happen in chapter 10. Ezekiel witnesses the Glory of God depart from the Temple. God’s glory lifts from above the mercy seat, leaves the temple through the east gate, and continues east up the Mount of Olives (11:23).

This is what the Mt. of Olives looks like today from Jerusalem. it is a graveyard covered in above-ground sarcophagi.

There is a fun connection to make about the role of the Mount of Olives in this account. that is the direction by which the Glory of the Lord departs from the temple and once it reaches that point, Ezekiel’s vision concludes. Now consider the story of the triumphal entry in the Gospels. It is a crucially anticipated and built-up-to moment in the accounts (especially the synoptics - Matthew, Mark, and Luke) as they portray Jesus as the Messianic King who is restoring the kingdom of God. Jesus enters Jerusalem from the east, departing from Bethany and coming over and down the Mount of Olives. If you read that account in connection with Ezekiel 11 you can see God’s glory returning to Jerusalem.

Revelation 12: The Woman and the Dragon

Now free from any sequence of seals or trumpets, John sees a vision of a vivid and dramatic scene involving a woman and a dragon in chapter 12. While parts of this vision may sound like a direct correlation to the Christmas story (especially Matthew’s ) it is again important - when reading the apocalyptic visions in Revelation - to resist restrictive and exactly correlative readings of the text. That is simply not how this type of literature is designed to function, despite the regrettable fact that it is the approach to Revelation we encounter most often in 2023. Here is NT Wright on the woman and the dragon

In the present chapter, there is one clue in particular which John has let slip, just in case we might have missed the point completely. The child whom the woman bears is the boy who is going to rule all the nations with a rod of iron' (verse 5). That is an obvious reference to Psalm 2.9. As we saw in the previous passage (11.18), John is applying that Psalm explicitly, as many other early Christians had done, to Jesus himself. He is the Messiah, the one whom God calls to bring the nations into line (even though we, with chapter 5 behind us, know that Jesus own way of accomplishing that end is very different to that imagined by the violent Jewish nationalist movements of the time).

This small but vital clue has led some to suggest that the woman in the story is Mary, the mother of Jesus. But this is too hasty by far. That's not how this kind of symbolism works, and John tells us explicitly that she is a 'sign, not a literal mother. It is far more likely that two figures stand behind her. First, there is Israel herself, frequently in scripture referred to as 'daughter Israel', the bride of YHWH. She is here seen not as the faithless Israel rebuked so often by the prophets, but as the true, faithful Israel, the nation that had struggled to stay in God's path and follow his vocation. It is from this faithful Israel, admittedly ultimately through the 'virgin daughter of Israel;’ Mary herself, that the Messiah is born. But this woman, who now takes centre stage in Gods purposes for his world is the priestly kingdom, holy nation of Exodus 19.6. She represents the entire story of God's people, chosen to carry forward his plans for the nations and indeed for the whole creation. That is why the sun, moon and stars form her robe, her footstool and her crown. That is why, too, the forces that range themselves against the creator God are determined to strike at her, and at her child.

Finally, with a swish of his majestic tail, the villain appears on stage - the villain who, we quickly learn, stands behind all the trouble that we have seen in the earlier chapters. The dark secret is revealed; the real problem is identified; the curtain has risen on the drama-within-the-drama, the central action which forms, now, the central scene in the whole book. The woman and her child are carrying the purposes of God for the world. The dragon is doing his best to snuff out those purposes before they can get under way. With the unveiling of the gospel of the lion-lamb there goes, as well, the unveiling of the ultimate mystery of evil.

The second image behind the woman in this passage may well be Eve, the original mother of all human life. It is Eve, after all, who is told that her 'seed will crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3.15). The two identities go together. If the woman is 'Israel', she is for that reason the one in whom God's purposes for humanity are to be realized. And that purpose includes, as a central and necessary part of the agenda, the crushing of the ultimate power of evil. The destroyer is to be destroyed.

Revelation 12: The Great Battle

A great battle with God’s angels and people on one side, and the dragon and his angels on the other breaks out in the second half of chapter 12.

a decisive victory has been won, but it seems that two quite different groups of people have been involved in winning it. There is war in heaven' - an alarming enough concept; Michael, the great archangel of Daniel 10, summons all his angels to fight against the dragon and his angels. If we are able to give this any meaning in our imaginations, it must be that the moral and political struggles of which we are aware, the battles between good and evil, between justice and injustice, which go on in this life, reflect a more primeval battle which has taken place in the spiritual sphere. Michael has won, and the dragon has lost. This loss means that he is thrown down to the earth, ejected from heaven altogether.

But wait a minute. The song of victory which follows this great event gives credit for the victory, not to Michael, but to God's people on earth. 'They conquered him', says the loud voice from heaven, by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony, because they did not love their lives unto death' (verse 11). So who defeated the dragon? Was it Michael or was it the martyrs?

Well, in a sense it was both. The heavenly reality of the victorious battle is umbilically joined to the earthly reality of the martyrs deaths. As followers of the lamb, they believe that they have already been saved by his blood, and that his self-giving to death is the pattern which they must now follow. And that is what wins the battle.

The dragon is, after all, the accuser". The early church learned to see this supernatural 'accusing activity standing not far behind all the 'accusations' that were levelled against them. Such accusations included both the informal ones, whispered by their critical neighbours, wondering why these people weren't joining in with the usual pagan festivities, especially the imperial religion; and the more formal ones, brought by the authorities, and carrying an official penalty, often death. All sorts of slanders and lies were told about the early church. The Christians learned to see them for what they were: accusations from 'the father of lies' (John 8.44).

NT Wright Revelation for Everyone, 111